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Re: OT - Remembering D-Day, 6 June 1944.

Originally Posted by BcRaven

While I'm not disputing your post here, every step the 3rd Reich took was another step down the slippery slope to Hell. The German people looked the other way, and allowed it to fall into what it ultimately became. OR are you saying if they (German people) would have known, they would have done something about it? ... Bc
P.S. - I think those savage bastards called it "the final solution."

I am not forgiving the German people as a whole. Antisemitism was rampant but much of it was fueled by propaganda poster, radio programs, etc.

When I hear people say "they knew", I break it down this way ....

They = the average German citizen

Knew = The Final Solution (thanks for the correction)

So no, they were not aware of what was going on. To them, the Jews were being deported at first. Over time, the stories would come out that Jews were being killed but even then they were dismissed as random acts of violence by soldiers. It wasn't until Himler gave a speech in the summer 1943 that the final solution meant the extermination of all Jews. But by then, it was WAY too late. The Reich was desperate and killing anyone and everyone that was remotely resisting.

Once everyone found out about it, it was far too late for a citizen uprising.

WARNING: This post may contain material offensive to those who lack wit, humor, common sense and/or supporting factual or anecdotal evidence. All statements and assertions contained herein may be subject to literary devices not limited to: irony, metaphor, allusion and dripping sarcasm.

Re: OT - Remembering D-Day, 6 June 1944.

Originally Posted by HoustonRaven

I'm going to take issue with this here.

My wife's "German Parents" (her host parents when she lived in Sauerlach) are well into the 70's and we've had many frank discussions with them. Sure, there were rumors and rumblings, but they did not know the full extent of what was going on.

Take a look at an aerial view of Dachau back then. Other than quarters for the troops, there's literally no housing anywhere close to the camp. Nothing but trees and a long dirt road separated Munich from Dachau back then. Today, it's like any other suburb but back then it was "in the sticks" as we would say.

"The full extent"--? Probably not. But I'm going to take issue with you & your wife's Ersatzeltern here. When I grew up in Dundalk we could smell the waste treatment disposal facilities on Back River quite distinctly when the wind was wrong--& we were one hell of a lot farther from there than KZ-Dachau was from the nearest settlements.

IIRC Albert Speer in Inside the Third Reich described the mindset of the time quite well: Average Germans were all but certain horrible things were going on that they didn't quite know about. Anyone who knew would be morally obligated to do something about those things--something that would probably get them killed--or be complicit. So they made it their business to avoid any situations or conversations where they might learn too much. (Again IIRC Speer made it clear that this was not an excuse, much less a means to avoid culpability, rather an observation on how the German mind worked.)

More than a few people must have smelled human bodies being incinerated. Very few (if any) asked why, if there were deaths at the camp, they were not simply buried (the answer of course being that there were too many).

The Nazi's went to great lengths to hide what was going on. Even in the camp itself, most troops had no idea what was going on just across the creek in that secluded little brick house.

And just what do you think was going on?

If you're referring to the "homicidal" gas chamber visitors see, note that KZ-Dachau was not an extermination camp (as were Birkenau, Sobibor, Belzec etc.). I have never seen any [ETA: hard credible] evidence gas was used to murder inmates there, even on fairly strident Holocaust sites (for example, this one). (NB there were 4 other "gas chambers" there that treated inmates' clothing, in which Zyklon-B was used for its original intended purpose--to kill insects & vermin.)

Please note, I am not defending the Nazis here--what happened at any of these camps was indefensible by any moral standard. I am simply pointing out that Dachau fell short of what most people consider the ultimate obscenity: the deliberate, efficient, technologically sophisticated murder of millions of men, women & children for no other reason than the ethnic or religious group they were born into.

Re: OT - Remembering D-Day, 6 June 1944.

The average GErman citizen knew because Hitler said he was going to kill every Jew on
German soil many many times in his speeches before he actually killed 1 of 3 Jews in
Europe. They knew that other minority groups besides Jews were being exterminated and Hitler was ready to turn on the Catholics next.

Official gov't newspapers even chronicled the events.

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The reports, in newspapers and magazines all over the country were phases in a public process of "desensitisation" which worked all too well, culminating in the killing of 6m Jews, says Robert Gellately.
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Re: OT - Remembering D-Day, 6 June 1944.

loba --

I think we're saying the same thing, just seeing it from two different definitions of "they knew".

WARNING: This post may contain material offensive to those who lack wit, humor, common sense and/or supporting factual or anecdotal evidence. All statements and assertions contained herein may be subject to literary devices not limited to: irony, metaphor, allusion and dripping sarcasm.

Re: OT - Remembering D-Day, 6 June 1944.

Here's Reagan's Point-du-Hoc speech at Normandy considered the greatest speech of all
times along with his Berlin Wall speech when he told Gorby: You will bring the wall down.
And he did.

This speech is at Point-du-Hoc where Army Rangers scaled the huge clifts to take out
German gun emplacements. As a line in the Longest Day says, man, those clifts aren't as
big as the ones we trained on but it was still suicide as Reagan points out.

Ranger and Ranger fell as they took the clifts but the next guy picked it up. The Germans couldn't understand why the Americans kept coming and coming. They said we kept killing
them and they still came.